U.S. likely to see its influence reduced / New government will have own voice on policy, experts say

Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, February 15, 2005

While fears of an Islamic theocracy taking over in Iraq have lessened with election results showing a slimmer-than-expected majority for the main Shiite slate, the new government will not be the firm pro-U.S. ally the Bush administration had hoped for, say analysts.

The largely religious Shiite Arab slate, which won 48 percent of the vote for the 275-seat National Assembly, will have to negotiate with the secular- leaning, pro-U.S. Kurdish slate to name a new prime minister, president and other top-level government positions.

But the party of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite heavily favored by Washington, lagged far behind, winning a mere 38 seats in the assembly. His future is unclear, although some political observers in Iraq and Washington speculate he will play a role in the new government.

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Still, the election outcome was not unexpected by U.S. policy-makers, and the Bush administration on Monday expressed optimism about relations with the Shiite-dominated government.

"We look forward to working with the new government and supporting them as they move forward ... on putting the leadership in place, drafting a constitution and then holding an election at the end of the year for a permanent representative government," said White House press secretary Scott McClellan.

While the United States is likely to have diminishing sway over Iraqi policies, it is still the main provider of security, which will prompt the country's new rulers to seek stable relations with Washington, said Juan Cole, a professor of Middle East history at the University of Michigan.

"They want to keep Iraq at an even keel; they'll try to smooth things over," he said.

The two leading candidates to become Iraq's next prime minister, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, the French-educated interim finance minister; and Ibrahim al- Jaafari, a former London physician who is interim vice president, are members of the victorious United Iraqi Alliance. While the alliance is loyal to the Iraqi Shiite's spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, both men have called for a broad-based government representing all of Iraq's ethnic and religious groups.

But analysts also warn that the majority coalition's Islamic -- and Iranian -- roots could undermine such goals.

Abdul-Mahdi has said the new Iraqi leadership will not want to emulate Iran. "We don't want either a Shiite government or an Islamic government," he said on CNN's "Late Edition" Sunday.

But both Abdul-Mahdi and al-Jaafari represent parties that call for a greater role for Islam in society and have close ties to Iran.

Al-Jaafari, for example, spent several years in exile in Iran. Most of the militia members in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Shiite slate's largest faction, were trained in Iran.

The Kurdish parties, one of whose leaders, Jalal Talabani, a secular Sunni Kurd, is being put forward as the country's next president, also have long depended on Iran economically and politically. Many young Kurds were born in Iran, where their parents were refugees from Saddam Hussein's rule.

Telhami called the escalating tensions between Tehran and Washington "potentially a major issue in defining the relationship between the new Iraqi government and the United States."

A parliament dominated by parties with close ties to Iran is not what the Bush administration originally envisioned when it promoted last month's election as Iraq's significant first step on the road to democracy.

But it still allows President Bush to take credit for establishing a democratic framework in a country ruled by dictatorship for decades, said Larry Sabato, an expert on U.S. politics at the University of Virginia -- as long as Washington uses the election as the stepping stone for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

"If the Bush administration is smart they will simply accept the results and move on -- and then get out," he said. "That is what the American people want. We've done our bit."

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